Khmelnytskyi Uprising

Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj enters Kiev victoriously. Painting by Mykola Iwasjuk , late 19th century.

date	1648 to 1657
place	Ukraine , Moldova , Belarus , Poland
output	Victory of the Cossacks

Parties to the conflict
Zaporozhian Cossacks	Poland-Lithuania
Commander
Bohdan Khmelnytskyi	Władysław IV. Wasa John II Casimir
losses
unknown	unknown

The Khmelnyzky uprising was a major uprising of the Zaporog Cossacks and broad sections of the Russian Orthodox population under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj in the years 1648-1657 directed against the feudal corporate state of Poland-Lithuania . The reason was the increasing arbitrariness of Polish aristocratic landowners towards the Ukrainian-Belarusian (Ruthenian) rural population, economic exploitation and religious pressure on Orthodoxy within the framework of the Union of Brest . In modern historiography it is often referred to as the national liberation war of the Ukrainian and Belarusian people .

course

Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj, an expropriated Ruthenian nobleman, went to the Zaporoger Sich , the refuge of the Cossacks on the other side of the rapids of the Dnieper , and was elected hetman there. The Zaporozhian Cossack army led by him , which had a colossal influx from the anti-Polish population, began a successful campaign against the army of the Polish crown and defeated them severely several times. As early as 1648, at the beginning of the uprising, Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj sent an embassy to Moscow with a request for assistance. However, since Moscow was reluctant to start a new war against Poland-Lithuania, the Cossacks had to ally with the Khan of Crimea . As payment, the Crimean Tatars were allowed to keep the lion's share of the captured Polish goods. The Cossacks began an unstoppable advance westward, with large-scale massacres of Poles, Jesuits , Roman Catholic clergymen and Jews being committed during the campaign . How many Jews fell victim to the pogroms is controversial in research: the genocide researcher Gunnar Heinsohn estimates that between 34,000 and 42,500 people were murdered, the historian Shaul Stampfer calculates around 18,000 deaths, which is almost half of the Jewish population corresponded to Ukraine. The uprising was not limited to the East Slav area of the Polish Crown (today's Ukraine ), but also included the East Slav areas of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (today's Belarus ).

The fortunes of war left Khmelnitsky when the Crimean Khan İslâm III Giray betrayed the Cossacks in the battles near Sboriw , Berestetschko and Schwanets so that Poland would not be too weakened. Thereupon Khmelnytskyi turned again to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich . At the Rada of Perejaslav in January 1654, a large part of the Cossack elite swore an oath of allegiance to the tsar. The Tsardom of Russia then declared the Polish-Lithuanian war. The very changeable Russian-Polish War 1654–1667 was a continuation of the Khmelnytskyi uprising. In the end, what is now Ukraine was divided between Russia and Poland along the Dnieper .

swell

Nathan Hanover : Jawen Mezulah , German by Benjamin II. , Hanover 1863 online Contemporary report on the massacres

Literary adaptations

Henryk Sienkiewicz : With Fire and Sword , 1884, novel - the Polish Nobel Prize winner for literature addresses the uprising in the Ukraine under Khmelnyzkyj against Polish-Lithuanian rule.

The film adaptation of the novel from 1999 was with over 7 million viewers the most successful cinema film in Poland after the fall of the Wall.

Isaac Bashevis Singer : Satan in Goraj , Roman - the Yiddish-Polish-American Nobel Prize for Literature describes the massacre of the Jewish population very vividly.
Isaac Bashevis Singer : Jakob der Knecht , Roman - One of the haunting novels of the great narrator and Nobel Prize winner. Poland, 17th century: Khmelnytsky Uprising, pogroms. A Jewish refugee becomes a serf when I fall in love with the Christian daughter of his Polish master. When Jacob is ransomed, he converts Wanda to his faith and takes her as his wife. But that puts them in mortal danger.

Individual evidence

↑ Gunnar Heinsohn : Lexicon of Genocides (= Rororo 22338 rororo current ). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-499-22338-4 .
↑ Shaul Stampfer: What actually happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648? In: Jewish History. Vol. 17, No. 2, 2003, pp. 207-227, quoted from Frank Golczewski : Chmielnicki-Pogrome (1648-1649) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Handbook of Antisemitism , Vol. 4, Events, Decrees, Controversies . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2011 ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , p. 74 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).

Web links

Commons : Khmelnytskyi Uprising - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Nuoffer, Franz. The first phase of the uprising of the Cossacks under Chmielnicki in the years 1648–1649 . University of Leipzig , 1869.
German article about the Khmelnytskyi uprising on kriegsreisen.de

[1] Gunnar Heinsohn : Lexicon of Genocides (= Rororo 22338 rororo current ). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-499-22338-4 .

[2] Shaul Stampfer: What actually happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648? In: Jewish History. Vol. 17, No. 2, 2003, pp. 207-227, quoted from Frank Golczewski : Chmielnicki-Pogrome (1648-1649) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Handbook of Antisemitism , Vol. 4, Events, Decrees, Controversies . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2011 ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , p. 74 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).